Clips

CLIPS

The Godfather, The Godfather PART II

At The Detroit Film Theatre

By Armond White

   Francis  Ford Coppola's The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II will be presented for two consecutive Saturdays starting September 4 at the Detroit Film Theatre in the Institute of Arts.

 The movie diehards among us may wonder why this greatest of cinematic couplets was not, just for once, presented together in a single program or on a single day. Eliot Wilhelm, coordinator of the DFT, explained: "Asking an audience to sit for six and a half hours-seven with an intermission-is asking too much. The two films are so extraordinary, there's so much information to take in from each one, that after a while people's attention would begin to drift.

   "This way," Wilhelm went on, "we're still giving them only a week to digest it all, while most of us had a year."

   Director-writer Coppola spans the years in the tale of these movies -particularly with the point-counterpoint (present tense-past tense) structure of Part II, which is the richer, more complex of the films. Taken together, the two PPJ films present nothing less than great tragic drama- at one point in Part II, in fact, Coppola creates a direct allusion to Greek tragedy.

   The story of the Corleone family (the world's favorite mafiosi) is raised to classic status. Besides the awesomeness of the production and the perfection reached in the acting and direction in both films, Coppola's conception of Part II clearly defines the story of the Corleones so that it becomes an All-American epic of melting pot dreams and corruption.

   There's more than a little similarity between Coppola's magnum opus and the Lonnie Eider play Ceremonies in Dark Old Men. Both are I about the success-incentives (not work-incentives) passed from father to son, and both detail the moral corruption and dissolution of family unity that results from the itch for success and  respectability through money and power.

    That's the central American story, and it is a tragedy. The beauty of works like Ceremonies and the Godfather films is in their ability to express that tragedy in a way that relates to us all. The Godfather films aren't simply the greatest gangster movies ever, they are the family movies of all time. And it must be understood that in giving us an understanding of criminals Coppola is in no way making heroes out of them.

   Al Pacino is at his best in the central role of Michael. The role of his father, Don Vito Corleone, is split between Marion Brando as the Don in the first film, and Robert DeNiro as the young Don in the second. It 's one of Brando's worst performances- but DeNiro is so miraculous that coming later, as he does through a series of luxurious flashbacks, he salvages Brando's haminess and makes something special out of the whole character.

   And there's another star deserving equal rank with Coppola, DeNiro and Pacino -the photographer, Gordon Willis, who provides the most stunning, artful use of color photography in American movie history.

   The achievements in these two films are extraordinary; the DFT's close-together presentation of them amounts to a real cultural event.

(Information on the Detroit Film Theater's entire schedule of serious film art-shown Friday and Saturday evenings at the Detroit Institute I of Arts auditorium- can be found by calling 833-7900, or check the Motor City Edutaiment Guide-weekly in The Sun.)